Of virtue, truth well tried and wise experience.”
With the plant of the defunct Emlenton Echo, which he had bought from R. F. Blair and boated to Oil City, J. W. Smullin propelled the Monitor in 1863. O. H. Jackson, a sort of perambulatory printing-office, and C. P. Ramsdell figured in the ownership at different times. Jackson let go in the fall of 1864 and Jacob Weyand bossed the ranch until it was absorbed by the Venango Republican, the first out-and-out political newspaper in the settlement. Smullin farmed in Cranberry township, dispensed justice as “’Squire” and died in 1894. Of Jackson’s whereabouts nothing is known. He flaunted the Sand-Pump at Oil City, the Bulletin at Rouseville, the Gaslight at Pleasantville and ephemeral sheets at other points. The outfits of the Register, Petrolian, Republican and Monitor were consolidated in December, 1867, by Andrew Cone and Dr. F. F. Davis, into the weekly Times. The paper was well managed, well edited and well sustained. A syndicate of politicians bought it in 1870, to boom C. W. Gilfillan, of Franklin, for Congress, and George B. Delamater, of Meadville, for State-Senator in the Crawford district. A morning daily was tacked on. L. H. Metcalfe, who lost a leg at Gettysburg, had editorial charge. Thomas H. Morrison, of Pleasantville, officiated as manager, W. C. Plumer presided as foreman and A. E. Fay acted as local news-hustler. The daily died with the close of the campaign, a fire that destroyed the establishment hurrying the dissolution. Metcalfe went back to Meadville and was elected county-treasurer. Whole-souled, earnest and trustworthy, he made and retained friends, wrote effectively and “served his day and generation” as a good man should. The grass and the flowers have bloomed above his head for nineteen years. Morrison entered politics, put in a term faithfully as county-treasurer, studied law, practiced at Smethport and was elected judge of the McKean-Potter district.
ANDREW CONE.
MRS. CONE.
MISS THROPP.
Hon. Andrew Cone, to whose bounteous purse and willing pen the Venango Republican and the Oil-City Times owed their continuance, was of Puritan descent, nephew of the founder of Oberlin College, born in 1822, reared on a New-York farm and married to a Maryland lady. His parents dying, he removed to Michigan, lost his first and second wives by death, and in 1862 settled at Oil City to superintend the United Petroleum-Farms Association’s sale of building-lots. He named various Oil-City streets, helped build the first Baptist church and labored for temperance and local improvements. In 1868 he married Miss Mary Eloisa Thropp, of Valley Forge, a cultured linguist and writer. Her brother, Joseph E. Thropp, owns the iron-works at Everett and is married to the late Colonel Thomas A. Scott’s eldest daughter. Her two sisters, Mrs. George Porter and Miss Amelia Thropp, also reside at Oil City and are gifted writers. Mr. Cone and W. R. Johns collected the data of “Petrolia,” a perfect treasury of facts concerning oil, which the Appletons published in 1869. Governor Hartranft appointed Mr. Cone to represent the oil-regions at the Vienna Exposition in 1873. He served four years with great fidelity as consul in Brazil and died in New York on November seventh, 1880, as one to whom “Well done, good and faithful servant,” is spoken through all the centuries. Mrs. Cone’s “Wild Flowers of Valley Forge” will give an idea of the exquisite work of the Thropp sisters, who are esteemed for their poetic talents and unselfishness:
Blest be the flowers that freely blow
In this neglected spot,
Anemone with leaves of snow
And blue Forget-me-not.
God’s laurels weave their classic wreath,